


pig's man

by CravenWyvern



Category: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
Genre: headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 12:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19830364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CravenWyvern/pseuds/CravenWyvern
Summary: I quite liked A Machine for Pigs actually, I liked it a lot.





	pig's man

**Author's Note:**

> I quite liked A Machine for Pigs actually, I liked it a lot.

Oswald Mandus had a rather uncoff face. And he knew this, very well.

When he had been young, a child in a school full of his peers, under a sky of rainy clouds and foggy smog, he had been mocked for it. Small eyes, piggy eyes, dark and shiny, but that wasn’t all.

His family was a butcher family, one that raised its pigs and raised them well, fed them well, and when he went out to help his father and his grandfather Oswald would pet their wrinkly snouts and poke their bristly sides and watch as his forefathers butchered and slaughtered and strung up the fatty piggy bodies, and when all was said and done he ate with his family, bacon and sides and loins and ribs, and his mother would tell him, sternly, that to cook the pig right was the most important part right after the killing, because the feast for the family was what brought it all together.

But the eating of meat, fatty meat, heavy with potatoes and carrots and the occasional greenery, baked bread and sweets and pastries of every kind that his mother had learned from her mother, who had learned from her mother before her, gave him a rounder figure than most of the children in the school yard. And they all could see that.

So when words were shouted and little Mandus was shoved and pushed and laughed at, what he heard was “fatty” and “piggy” and “cake eater” and all matter of words that no young child should hear on such a constant basis.

He did not tell his mother, his father, not even his esteemed grandfather. Oswald was an only child, with pigs and imaginary friends he’d talk to in the dark of his lonely bedroom, so who did he tell these things to besides the monsters under his bed and closet? 

Each little boy that looked at him, the older boys looking down at his pudgy body and sturdy, blocky form, each one of them made a choice and each one of them took a deep breath of air and each one of them looked him in the eye and the words out of their little mouths were not kind, not at all.

And when it came to pushing, shoving, tripping, it got even worse. One day, Mandus came home with a black eye, after weeks of bruises he hid from his mom and father and grandfather, and he came home crying and sobbing with snot sniffed from his already twice busted nose, and that day was when he was taken to the side by his father, after his mother had cooed and cried and gotten a slab of frozen pork out to cover his face, to reduce the swelling, as she told him.

And his father held him by the arms, crouched down to look at his bruised, snot and tear covered little face, pudgy and fat with good food and heavy genetics, just like his father and his mother and his grandfather and all the men and woman before him, all back down the line to the first settlers who have crossed miles to settle their new home in this land, now covered in bricks and rock and poison smog choked air, and Oswald sniffed and looked up at his father, who had just this morning shown him how to knock a fattened pig out to the ground, stunned, a gilt that they strung up with some heaving and hoing, and then showed him how to sharpen the knife and then held his hand to show where, exactly, the cut should be, and his father heaved a heavy sigh.

Little Mandus, that very morning, had his father hold his hand and help him draw the line to slit that pig's throat, and they had caught the blood as it had spilled out in big buckets, and his mother was to cook that blood up into pudding, and then sausages, and then sauces, and with that his grandfather had finished up feeding the lots and came out of the barn to help cut and slice, and he had sat up on one of the tree trunks set out there for chopping wood and watched them, his mother bringing out a slice of bread with butter spread generously all about it, chewing on the snack idly and watching with his little, dark piggy eyes.

“You are a Mandus, Oswald.” His father had said to him, voice heavy and serious and deep, just like his grandfathers, but not as roughened by smoked tobacco, teeth only darkly, stickly stained. “You are part of a pig family, a long line, and this family has raised and bred and slaughtered, sold, many a pig, to everyone in this town. Everyone has eaten from our families hands, for generations, and they will continue to do so.”

His father had stopped then, looked at his son and patted him on the shoulder, and heaved one more sigh, not the last one he would give Oswald, and stood up.

Little Mandus sniffed, rubbed at his face, and his father looked down at him and gave him the words he’d remember for a long, long time.

“Do not let them forget who feeds them, Oswald.”

Later that night, the swelling having gone down and now not as snotty or pale as he had been, Oswald picked at his dinner and mumbled at his mothers worried little questions, and when he went to bed he went with a dejected, saddened little cloud about him.

His grandfather then came up, a thrice knock at the door, and he scooted through the doorway, and after a moment he gave his grandson a warm smile, the wrinkles bunching up all around his own shiny, dark piggy eyes, and he sat down on the bed, made it squeak and dip heavy as Mandus rubbed his eyes and sat up, and they had a little talk, that night, that Oswald would not remember later in his years.

“A Mandus you are, and don’t forget that.” His grandfather said, repeated, and his voice was rough and deep and smoky already, chewing tobacco forgone for tonight but stinking of cigar smoke, and Oswald looked up at him with the childlike innocence of his age, of one pushed and bruised by the sharpness of those he could have once thought of as friends.

His grandfather has been through it too. He’s been through the mean looks, sharp and preying and biting, because he was big and dull and much too simple for the lot of them, even though he was a herder of pigs and raiser and breeder and butcher, even though he made sure the meat was brought to their houses, let their wives put food to their table, even though he worked through heat and sweat and pig stink, just for them, just to see their families grow, to see their children grow and work and make this little town he loved so much grow even more, and they bit him for it, with teeth grown strong from his own sweat and tears and blood.

“Don’t let them bite you.” His grandchild looked at him, sad and hurt and confused, and the old, fat man gave him a sharp, piggy smile. “You are the hand that feeds, and you are the boar that sets them in line. If they keep shoving you around, kid, you better pick them up by the scruff and toss them back into their stall, cause they’ll trample you down and then they’ll eat ya up. You let them do that, and it’s all over.”

“I don’t wanna get bit. It hurts…”

He pat his grandchild on the head, fluffy curly blond hair still with that child fuz, and he slowly heaved himself back up.

“Be the boar, if ya don’t wanna be a hand. Shove them back, put them in their place, cause you’re the next in charge, and if ya don’t, then you’ll be a dead Mandus, and I don’t think your mother’s gonna like that all too much kid.”

When Oswald went to bed that night, he closed his eyes real tight, ignored the whispering mean child voices of his monsters under his bed, the one in his closet snorting and squealing and clopping its hooves against the wooden walls, and in the morning he woke up more rested than he’s felt in all too long.

When his mother was called to school that day, word passing by mouth and quickly, hurriedly catching on, little Mandus stood proud and firm, a split lip and busted nose for a third time.

But this time, his bullies were the ones with the most bruises, and the top most older boy had to go to the doctor for a concussion. The rocky road he had fallen upon had scratched him up too, and Oswald had the scratches but not nearly as bad.

The boy, as the principal explained, had rushed the other, had thrown him to the ground, and even though no one spoke a word everyone knew it had happened because of flying words, of calling mothers fat pigs and sows, of calling fathers bastards and other horrible little words that had caught in children's brains after the whispered gossip of their parents over dinner.

His mother had taken him home early, had shaken her finger at him, scolded him, had told him that he had been naughty and that there would be no dessert tonight, but little Mandus puffed up his chest and told her that it was okay, he could take it.

After all, he had made sure no one could call her a fat piggy bitch ever again.

His mother had quieted at that, shocked at the word that had come out of her sons mouth, and then crouched down to give him a big, wide hug. She’d be talking to the other mothers after this, squeaking of the possible dangers that words could do to their own children, and each lady would cover their mouths and pretend to be shocked, for her sake, because none of them were ever truly her friend.

She knew this. She’s been bit too. 

But she let her husband do the shoving for her, so little Mandus came to the realization that he had to stand up for her just as much as his father, and his grandfather.

After that day, the other children came to call him under a differing name than the one he had been christened with. There were whispers now, around him, about him, and new kids were quickly hushed whenever there was a jab at his size, at his fatty, flabby face and arms, his tiny eyes or how his hair was still curly and thin and sometimes got so sweaty that it plastered to his large head and made him look even greasier than ever.

Because later, at lunch, as some kids forgot their worries and played and swung and tossed sticks at each other in mock sword fights, or even raised them as false guns and pursed their lips and pew, pewed each other, those same new little kids got cornered in, in the dark areas of the school, hidden from old adult eyes, and the new Boar would cross his arms and glower and give them a big old deep fat frown, one that his father and grandfather would give him sometimes when he tripped and dropped a bucket of pig blood, or slopped out the swine intestines by accident, got mud and dirt and grass all about in a big old mess, and then his face would split and those new little kids got to see a genuine blocky smile out of the newly made top shot of the school before the older lackies stood back a few steps.

They got out of their new leaders way, and Oswald was kind to them for it. 

They were all pigs, after all. Give the sow a nice pat on the head, a scratch behind the ear, and five minutes later her blood was going to be splattering into the bucket for his mother to cook down for a delicious meal.

Sometimes that meal went to the neighbors, all wrapped up and pretty, a nice fattening present, bought from the family butcher shop.

And, sometimes, Oswald Mandus got to taste that blood all for himself, and his family ate with him, and they grew fat, and happy, and that?

That was all little Mandus wanted.


End file.
